Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Browncoats and Blue States... Oh and I Think I Mention the Dixie Chicks Somwhere in There

So, I just recently made this really neato icon, naming the Dixie Chicks as honorary Browncoats, and I got a lot of feedback of it. Most ran the gamut of You Go Girl! to Browncoats? Yeah right! So it got me to thinking about this gut reaction I had naming these three women Browncoats, and why I would do such a thing. And I wanted to explain it, just for anybody who might have ever wondered about it. We’ve named other people Browncoats before, but it just seems that naming the Dixie Chicks in anything seems to get people’s temperature rising. Okay, firstly, this is not a flame thread. If you don’t intend to read this post in its entirety your responses are not wanted here. If you intend to just say Dixie Chicks suck (or Dixie Sluts or Dixie Hicks), then you’re not wanted here either. Firstly, I think to myself, what is the meaning of a Browncoat? What comes to mind when we think about Mal, Zoe, Tracey, or any of the others that struggled in their fight against the Alliance? Well for me, it’s pure and simple doggedness. They’re stubborn. They’ll be gorramed if they would have let the Alliance tell them what to do and think, and they’ll be gorramed if they’re going to let them do it now. They’re stubborn people. Now, did everybody agree with them? No way. Just because not everybody was a purplebelly didn’t mean there weren’t alliance sympathizers through and through. And that made it hard for them, but they fought anyway, and even today still fight for what they think. Okay, now to the Chicks. Now, I agree with them, let me get that out of the way here and now. However, if you look at what has occurred with them, you know that they have qualities that our comrades in brown possess. They said what they said. Yeah, we all know that. And they didn’t back down. That’s the main point I’m trying to tell people. Don’t focus on the message, (because some people don’t agree), focus on the brunt they took for it. Yeah, their record sales went down, but they have a whole nother group of fans that they’ve cultivated. And everybody’s talking about how they’re whining. People, they’ve received death threats. Their families have received death threats. Trust me. When they say that they think this thing has gone to far, I’m going to have to agree with them. They never said, don’t burn our records, they never said, don’t play our songs. They said, don’t kill our families. Don’t kill us. That’s a totally different ballpark. People who said they’re whining because people stopped buying their records, obviously don’t know the whole story. So, yes, I would say that they did try to instill that into the public, but I don’t see anything wrong with that. Okay, so they’ve stood up for what they believe in the face of threats of bodily harm. Need I remind you that a man came to their concert in Texas with all intentions of killing Natalie Maines, and was only arrested at the gate? This is a fact people. So, when is doing all of that not enough? When is standing up for something you believe in, no matter what other people think, even when they disagree with you, even when they threaten you, how is that not the makings of a Browncoat? They never said bomb America, they never said Kill the President, they didn’t like the way that things were going, and they said so. Is that so different as what Mal would have done?